Ghana For Sale

Democracy is a set of rules for managing conflicts, a key goal in openess and transparency in any government. Sadly, we seem to be going backwards in that regard.There has been so much hatred in Ghana between the two main political parties that the situation if in the US would have been elevated to code RED and because the media relish and promote hatred,what they are doing is just stirring the pot.The climate in the country has become so toxic with the cocaine case at stake and this has descended to one involving charges of hypocrisy.The parties have always presented themselves as above sleaze of machine politics but they are now seen in mud-wrestling contest while Ghanaians hold their coats. After the saga is over neither of the parties would be recognizable from the mud.

The stage is gradually being set for a future conflagration and the end result is going to be catastrophic and bring more hardship to the already suffering masses. Instead of the parliamentarians finding a consensus in debates and matters which would be beneficial to the people, they always place ideology-based politics ahead of reality based politics, from NDC to NPP.Even though they know the country has many items on it's worry list they always push in a direction that's more partisan bickering than more solution oriented.They never accept inconvenient truths because not a single bit of patriotism could be found in them.They are just there for their money. Bi-partisanship is seen by the extremes in both parties as betrayal.

"Compromise",the most valuable word in the political language is used as a damning epithet.

The cocaine case has brought a tidal wave of accusations from the opposition but it seems the NPP sea walls could stand them.Instead of finding a swift solution to this disgrace, they have resorted to laughable acts with the president stooping so low and allowing people to give him a good dressing on some FM stations. Words which donot befit the status of a country's president. The million dollar question here is if the president knew that somebody in the opposition was doing cocaine business which was going to tarnish the image of the country, he should have instructed the BNI to check on the truth and make arrest and which would have given credence to the zero tolerance he harped so much about during his campaign before 2000 elections.

Why has he waited for six years before coming out with names and casting innuendos? Does it mean that once the cocaine business didn't hurt anybody physically it was nobody's business to talk about it.If that is the case then the president has betrayed all the people who voted for him and the office he is holding.Secondly, he should have distanced the NPP party away from Amoateng's case but he kept quite until now and that has given people the opportunity to talk bad about the NPP party when the name of cocaine is mentioned in Ghana.Because of the accusation and counter accusations, the whole world and ghanaians may have every reason to believe that the two main parties in the country have been complicits in the cocaine business.

The parliamentarian for Assin North, Kennedy Agyapong was a person who I had the most highest regard for being non-partisan sometimes. Now, I have seen that he is the most uncultured amongst the lot for going ballistic on some FM stations to the extent of insulting the former president, the wife and some citizens.This man spewed so much venom that if Hitler was to be living in Ghana now, it would have been a good cause for him to start the World War 3. His remarks were outrageous and obnoxious and those incendiary remarks are an embarrasement to his party.There is a difference between being sensible and being vocal. On the former, he failed woefully.I thought that he being somebody who had resided in the US for long, would have got his political sensibilities shaped to some extent. He denigrated people living in the village and wearing second hand clothes as if he was born in the Queen's Buckingham palace. An insult against a woman in any form is wrong.He has a wife and I think he would use his last ounce of strenght to defend her dignity.

He should feel ashamed of himself and say the " Mea Culpa" to his constituents.Ghana needs people who would unite us not those who would divide us.This must be ingrained in his mind forever.

The Kuffour administration should do well and stop sticking to the mantra of "it's not our fault" or blaming the previous government for everything going awry after six years and for mistakes as minor as punctuation.The government should know that the money it got from the US (MCA) if only used properly should provide it with a safefty valve for public frustration.

Opportunity, they say dances with those already on the dance floor.Until this is done we would continue to wash our dirty linen in the public and the effect would be to fall into oblivion while other countries progress.We should all join hands and stop the bickering else the next twenty years would be the same as the last twenty years with nothing achieved and panhandling would still be with us.